The top 10 marketing events that went viral in 2020

Recently, Bilibili announced the annual barrage rankings for 2020, among which "爷青回" successfully topped the list with 5.42 million comments.

The annual barrage is a summary and presentation made by Bilibili based on popular culture trends. In the year 2020 that is about to pass, the marketing circle can be said to be very lively. For example, the grassroots Ding Zhen counterattacked and became a top-tier Internet celebrity, becoming the focus of the majority of users; Mengniu and Coca-Cola jointly established a company, and "Ke Niu Le" closely linked the two companies together; "Sisters Who Make Waves", which has its own hot search physique, successfully achieved nearly 5 billion views with various topics; the post-95 generation Buddhist ideas went out of the circle, and Baidu became the biggest winner; the transfer of "China Koi" for 1 yuan became the most ridiculous marketing event of the year... and so on.

Today, Mr. Bingfa will take stock of the phenomenal marketing events in 2020. These topics have appeared frequently and occupied the WeChat Moments and various social media platforms of the majority of netizens, successfully stirring up the advertising and marketing market. What are their outstanding features?

1. Sweet Wild Boy

Grassroots counterattack, Ding Zhen unexpectedly became popular and transformed into a top star

Contribution to Weibo Super Topic: 980 million views, 36,000 posts

A 20-year-old young man from Litang, Ganzi, Sichuan, became popular on Douyin with a 9-second short video of pure, natural and original ecology, and became popular on the entire Internet. Ding Zhen, who is called a "sweet wild boy" by netizens, did not make his debut like other Internet celebrities after becoming popular on the Internet. Instead, he chose to become a tourism ambassador for his hometown Litang, and sincerely told netizens that he currently plans to study hard.

In this impetuous society, there are very few people who can truly abandon their impetuousness and calm down to do things that are more socially meaningful and positive.

Ding Zhen quickly occupied various social platforms as an Internet celebrity. Faced with his sudden popularity, Ding Zhen and the team behind him did not seize the traffic dividend to cash in as quickly as possible, but instead did something with greater social value - building his hometown and maximizing the value of its original ecological image.

2. Hard Candy Girl 303

Development program "Creation Camp 2020"

Let us see different girls

Contribution to Weibo Super Topic: 1.64 billion views, 30,000 posts

"Creation Camp 2020" adopts a new competition system, interacting with the audience through multi-dimensional and highly professional program content, and exploring the standards of new girl groups in a more open manner. At the same time, the program uses diversified content to connect circle culture, combining the current popular social network context and the preferences and aesthetics of Generation Z's circle culture to achieve communication with young people. The seven girls who stood out in this program successfully formed a group, and "Hard Candy Girl 303" was born.

The Hard Candy Girls 303, who successfully debuted through the training program "Creation Camp 2020", appeared in front of people with a sweet and handsome image. In this era that tends to output brand concepts, the program team has achieved a resonance effect by creating unique new words. In an extremely pleasant atmosphere, it allows users to remember the memory symbols created by the program, laying the foundation for the continuous output of program content in the future.

3. Exit Double 11

NetEase Yanxuan has achieved the ultimate in reverse marketing

150 million topic views and 15,000 discussions

During this year's Double 11, when all shopping platforms were doing their best to encourage people to "buy, buy, buy", NetEase Yanxuan loudly announced its "withdrawal from the Double 11 war", pointing out that "it is withdrawing from this Double 11 that advocates excessive consumption and carnival for sales figures", while urging the public to "consume rationally".

NetEase Yanxuan adopted a marketing method that goes against the trend, pointing out the pain points of users and merchants, and cleverly implanting the brand's marketing advertisements into this wave of reverse marketing. While attracting people's attention and stimulating public attention, it saved the brand a lot of marketing costs, becoming a dark horse in the Double 11 series of marketing.

4. Oolong Incident

The most ridiculous marketing: the transfer of "Chinese Koi" for 1 yuan

Contributed Weibo topics: 570 million views, 2.275 million discussions

Alipay Koi Xin Xiaodai launched an activity on Weibo to transfer "Chinese Koi" for 1 yuan, which attracted the attention of netizens. More people participated in the activity initiated by Xin Xiaodai with a fluke mentality. After 1 million reposts and 1 million likes, a misunderstanding occurred, and it was revealed that the brand "did not exist at all", becoming the biggest marketing misunderstanding on Weibo this year.

Coincidentally, in addition to the failure of Xin Xiaodai's 1 yuan transfer of "Chinese Koi", QQ Speed, which was deeply involved in the "Rashomon" of advertising, sued Lao Gan Ma for "going viral", and in the process of reversals and reversals, it successfully attracted the attention of netizens. Although it was a misunderstanding, the ending was satisfactory in the end. Lao Gan Ma and QQ Speed ​​may cooperate further.

If there hadn't been any blunders, this would have been a marketing stunner. Xin Xiaodai successfully took advantage of the public's herd mentality and mentality of taking chances to attract public attention and trigger user participation; and Lao Gan Ma, which claimed that it never advertised, suddenly started advertising. These two cases originally had the potential to become phenomenal communication cases, but unfortunately due to the misunderstandings, the public lost the opportunity to witness the phenomenal communication.

5. Sisters Riding the Wind and Waves

Topic Marketing,

30 women created 920+ WeChat public accounts with more than 100,000 followers

Contributed 2,303 hot searches and 645 Weibo hot searches

The Mango TV variety show "Sisters Who Make Waves", with over 4.8 billion views, is known as a hot search maker. Thanks to various gossip content and program clips, it frequently appears on hot searches, with related articles having a total reading volume of over 100 million. The program chose two hotly debated topics at the moment: "the midlife crisis of women over 30" and "forming a girl group through talent shows" which is popular in the variety show market. It redefined the standards for girl groups and gained extremely high attention.

Topic marketing is common, and it can be said that only "Sisters Riding the Wind and Waves" has taken topic marketing to the extreme. The program team incorporates controversial topics into the program and pushes topics of different categories that netizens are interested in to the public. This allows "Sisters Who Make Waves" to demonstrate its extremely high topic operation capabilities and hard power, and presents the brand with a classic case of topic marketing.

6. The Buddhist stall owner born after 1995

Unexpectedly out of the circle,

The laziest stall owner born after 1995 appeared in Hangzhou night market and made Baidu popular

In addition to Ding Zhen, there was also a stall owner born after 1995 who unexpectedly became popular. While brands are trying their best to find a way to stand out, a 1995-born stall owner in Hangzhou was playing games while setting up his stall, and achieved the small goal of over 100 million video views.

The indifferent stall owner successfully attracted the attention of the public, and "Xiaodu" who helped him receive users became unexpectedly popular. Many netizens said that they also wanted to bring the same speakers to develop the street stall economy and make money by playing games. The sudden popularity of the stall owner born after 1995 has made Xiaodu more visible and won the favor of netizens.

The magical and novel combination of the Buddhist stall owner born after 1995 and Xiaodu smart speaker successfully attracted a lot of attention. In the era of information explosion, if you want your communication to be more penetrating, you need to work hard on the content and form of your marketing. Against the backdrop of the booming street stall economy, Xiaodu has successfully become popular by alleviating users' resistance to watching advertisements by virtue of its highly compatible product usage scenarios, allowing users to actively watch advertisements.

7. Tanabata Frog

Lonely economy: the word “lonely” reveals the desolation

During this year's Chinese Valentine's Day, when brands were trying their best to get on the hot search list, "Chinese Valentine's Day frog" successfully topped the hot search list, received 630 million views and 177,000 discussions, and became a hot topic on the Internet, spreading to every social platform where young people gather. At the same time, a service for sending Chinese Valentine's Day frogs to friends appeared on Taobao.

Behind the popularity of “Qixi Frog” is the testimony of the development of the single economy and the lonely economy. At the same time, it allows brands to see the charm of "梗", and perhaps "梗" is an important way for brands to communicate with young groups. If brands want to succeed in breaking out of the circle, perhaps they should learn the skills of creating, playing with, and connecting with memes.

8. “200 Yuan” Press Conference

The most rustic marketing, Lao Xiang Ji’s marketing is too interesting

At this year's Lao Xiang Ji "200 Yuan" launch conference, its humorous language and funny marketing scenes successfully attracted the public's attention and allowed more brands to see the charm of earthy marketing. At the same time, applying memes spread on social media to advertisements and leveraging online hot spots to attract attention for brands has also become an important way of brand marketing.

After Lao Xiang Ji’s earthy marketing became popular, similar marketing has sprung up in front of the public, such as Heytea’s “Big Melon Today”, Kuaishou’s ninth anniversary advertisement “See”, etc. The earthy marketing that has swept the marketing circle has allowed brands to see more possibilities.

No matter what form of marketing content, the essence is to pursue traffic dividends. As the advertising godfather Ogilvy said: every advertisement should be a long-term investment in brand image. If you want to maximize the marketing value, you still need to raise the marketing concept to the level of focusing on users and raise marketing to the level of humanistic spirit, so that you can truly touch users' hearts.

9. The first cup of milk tea in autumn

Taking advantage of the situation, Nayuki's Tea launched the "Nayuki Milk Tea Festival"

Contributed to 2.4 billion views and 1 million discussions on hot Weibo topics

The original intention of leveraging marketing is to leverage the power of others to boost brand marketing. This autumn, after the online topic "The first cup of milk tea in autumn" became popular, Nayuki's Tea started promotions, which promoted the crazy growth of milk tea orders.

With the popularity of "the first cup of milk tea in autumn" and the rapid growth of Nayuki's orders, Nayuki's Tea further launched the "Nayuki Milk Tea Festival" to make the brand image more warm and emotional. Naixue, who is well aware of the preferences of young people, has also successfully become popular by relying on online topics and creating festivals, achieving the "integration of brand and effect" that the brand seeks.

Good marketing through leveraging trends will achieve twice the result with half the effort. In the market competition where "whoever wins the young people wins the world", Nayuki's Tea has successfully stood out. Leveraging marketing requires a high degree of fit between brand tone and hot topics, so that the brand can be given the ability to attract hot searches, leading to more fashionable and trendy marketing and helping the brand become a top streamer.

10. Awesome

Representative cases of joint marketing

Mengniu and Coca-Cola jointly set up a company

For more people, joint marketing has become a common thing. Mengniu and Coca-Cola have taken joint marketing to a new level. The two brands have jointly established a company named "Ke Niu Le". The domineering and imaginative name successfully attracted the public's attention, making this "awesome" new company an Internet celebrity even before it started its business.

From cross-border cooperation to cross-border joint ventures, the cooperation between Mengniu and Coca-Cola has successfully demonstrated the effect of brand superposition and achieved a marketing CP effect. In addition, in brand marketing, a catchy brand name itself has its own communication attributes. If you want to quickly increase the influence of your new brand’s name, you may want to work on brand superposition and slang.

Final Thoughts

In addition to the above event marketing, there are actually numerous hot marketing events such as "Net Depression Music", Lao Xiang Ji's Clucking, Luo Yonghao becoming the top influencer on Douyin, UnionPay's Poetry POS Machine Competition, Xiao Zhang's hand cut by the bathroom glass door, the "light yellow long skirt, fluffy hair" that became popular in "Youth With You 2", Tesla's disbanding of its public relations department, 227 unity, we don't need advertising, BYD's cross-border production of masks, etc.

It is not difficult to see that this is an era of extremely scattered attention. If you want to successfully capture the user's attention, you can use methods such as "forming CP", "cross-border", "leveraging Internet celebrities", and "creating social currency" to return marketing to users and guide marketers to open a different Pandora.

Author: Marketing Strategy

Source: Marketing Strategy (lanhaiyingxiao)